Reactions to Steele's TV ad??

Written by: Elly Shaw-Belblidia on Aug 28, 2006 8:59 AM EDT

I caught Michael Steele's TV ad last night and it surprised me. It's not the usual red-white-and-blue with gauzy images stuff. "Quirky" is how it might be described. I hate to steer traffic to his campaign website but if you want to view it yourself, go to: www.steeleformaryland.com/firstA...

I bring this up because I'm intrigued by the question of what makes an effective campaign ad. Remember how Dean was roundly criticized for his ads for the Iowa caucus? I never saw them myself, but according to Kos's "Crashing the Gate," they featured Dean in front of an "emotionless white background" and were modeled after Macintosh computer ads.

The Steele ad has a white background. But he's meant to be the chummy, trust-me guy talking to the audience. I'm sure they test-marketed it with African American voters, the ones he has to pull in to win. To me, he looks kind of goofy and I think of a used-car salesman.

Some blogs, including Mydd, are running occasional posts about campaign ads, giving readers a chance to critique them. I truly don't know what works. I do know that it shocked me to learn (again via "Crashing the Gate") that most ads are not done by Madison Avenue-type professionals, but by DC-based campaign hacks. I had assumed that since the Nixon era these ads were done by real pros. Kos also writes that Dems haven't been test-marketing their ads, instead they use focus groups which can be done more quickly but don't work so well for judging an ad's effectiveness. Also, Dems have tended to use "issue-oriented persuasion" in their ads rather than "triggering emotions."

Elly in Gaithersburg

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Location: Montgomery County, MD 20850